CHA’s Trina Gonzalez recently sent an email to COOs and CFOs asking for assistance in providing contact information — by July 14 — to the California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI) in response to Assembly Bill 1020.
This bill was enacted in 2021 and made changes to California’s health care debt and fair billing laws. Beginning Jan. 1, 2024, the responsibility to enforce these laws will move from the California Department of Public Health to HCAI. To ensure that the appropriate staff with your system or facility receives communications from HCAI about the compliance requirements of the Hospital Fair Billing Program, HCAI is specifically requesting that the following information be emailed to hfbp@hcai.ca.gov:
- Name of facility
- Address of facility
- License number
- Whether the facility is the primary license holder (parent hospital), distinct part, or consolidated part. If the facility is not the parent hospital (distinct part or consolidated part), does it use the same discount payment, charity care, and/or debt collection as the parent hospital, or will it submit policies separately?
- Secondary contact for hospital policy submission (name and email)
- Primary contact for the patient complaint process (name and email), if different from the primary contact for hospital policy submission
Please note that if the contact(s) provided applies to multiple facilities, systems should provide HCAI with the name, address, license number, and facility type (parent, consolidated, distinct part) for each facility to which the contact applies.